I submitted them as "reply comments" since the deadline for originals had passed, but I think this covers everything I wanted to say, despite a couple of typos discovered after the document was uploa
I have had that problem, except they were eating my shack! They pecked holes in the wood siding and trimming. The only way I have even been able to discourage them is to stuff aluminium foil in
I have never been a contest lover, but I did work the CQ 160m CW contest a couple of times, back in the LORAN days, and once won top score for my state. Only thing, there were but three other logs
The "S" in RST system on CW was never intended to be an S-meter report. In fact, the RST system and it predecessor were in place long before most hams even had an S-meter on their receiver. The sig
Remember, in the US amateurs are now allocated the entire band, 1800-2000 kHz as primary users. Radiolocation is officially gone, although other than the fishnet beacons, they have been absent for ye
not generally part of the allocated spectrum. Various countries have various parts of the band with varying power privileges (you'll have seen http://www.iaru-r1.org/index.php/documents/Documents/HF
So what I read into all this is: that those shared and excluded frequencies are allocated to other occupants that now rarely ( if ever) use them, but that national administrations don't think the ama
Galvanized Fe material is problematic from an R standpoint as well (vs. Cu). This results in a "lossy" ground plane. That condition has real impact the effectiveness of the antenna system, when compa
If you are talking about a vertical, you should be looking for maximum RF current at the feed point, or better still, maximum measured field strength, not the lowest SWR. A 50-ohm resistor dummy loa
My base-insulated Rohn 25 tower is 127' tall, with 80m OWL-fed dipole attached at 119'. I use the tower as 1/4 WL 160m vertical (actually a vertical tee since the dipole adds considerable top loading
It looks like this one was sneaked in over us, but it has the potential of severely affecting amateur radio towers and antennas. I have seen no mention of this from ARRL, and the news just appeared a
I run the open wire tuned feed line to my dipole attached to the tower at the 119' level, up through the inside the tower, spaced at the geometric centre of the triangle using plexiglass strips ever
I installed my buried radial system in 1983, using #12 bare soft-drawn copper and it is still in near-perfect condition. The radials were soldered to the common point at the base of the tower, a copp
Here it is Friday night, with relatively little QRN, but only a couple of signals are audible across the entire 160m band. 80/75m has a few more signals than that, but it's sparsely occupied as well.
The ongoing dearth of activity seems to have hit especially hard this Fall, but I have been noticing it for several years. Even when a major contest is on, there is usually enough empty space left ov
My base insulated tower is 127' of Rohn 25G. An 80m half-wave dipole is attached at the 119' level, the ends of which droop down to about 100' at each end, with runs of Phillystran from the ends of t
I ran across this, which was originally posted on the Broadcasting list and may be of interest to Topbanders. Something I might add as a justification for exceeding, if possible, the point of diminis
Sloping the ends of a beverage serves no useful purpose. That's an old wives' tale (or maybe I should say old Hammy Hambone's tale) started by W1WCR, I believe. Whether the wire is horizontal all the
Besides the advantage in roller inductors, edge wound more easily accommodates adjustable taps, using slide-on clips. It also makes the coil more mechanically stiff, for a given number of turns per i
I recently ran across this discussion on another radio forum, claiming that edge wound is inferior in terms of Q to round wire. It was said that on a flat strip, the current tends to crowd to the two